Vecima Networks Inc.

Hello, this is the Coruscall Conference Operator. Welcome to Resonant Network's fourth quarter fiscal 2025 results conference call and webcast. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Analysts and institutional investors who wish to join the question queue, simply press star and one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing any keys. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. Presenting today on behalf of Vesima Networks are Sumit Kumar, President and CEO, and Judd Smith, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call will begin with executive commentary on Vesima's financial and operational performance for the fourth quarter and year-end fiscal 2025 results. Lastly, the call will finish with a question and answer period for analysts and institutional investors. The press release announcing the company's fourth quarter and year-end fiscal 2025 results, as well as detailed supplemental investor information, are posted on Bessemer's website at www.bessemer.com under the investor relations heading. The highlights provided in this call should be understood in conjunction with the Companies audited annual consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes for the year ended June 30th, 2025 and 2024. Certain statements in this conference call and webcast may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities law from which SMS actual results could differ. Consequently, attendees should not place a new reliance on such forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements include but are not limited to statements regarding management's intentions, belief, or current expectations with respect to market and general economic conditions, future sales and revenue expectations, future costs, and operating performance. These statements are not guaranteed. of future performance and involves risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict and or are beyond our control. MISIMA disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law. Please review the cautionary language in the company's fourth quarter earnings reports report, and press release for fiscal 2025, as well as its annual information form dated September 25, 2025, regarding the various factors, assumptions, and risks that could cause actual results to differ. These documents are available on BESIMA's website at www.besima.com, under the investor relations heading, and on CDAR at www.cdarplus.ca. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Kumar to present his remarks. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'll start today with some commentary on the fiscal year and the fourth quarter. Judd will follow the review of our financial results, and then I'll return to discuss our outlook before we take your questions. Fiscal 2025 was a complex but pivotal year for Bessemer. We made great strides with product and technology advancements, secured major new contracts and agreements, and completed an important tuck-in acquisition, which combined to position Vecima for years of profitable growth. In the VBS segment, many operators were preparing for broad network upgrades as part of their transition to next-generation platforms like DOCSIS 4.0. These transitions are complex. But by year end, a number of our customers had completed their field level qualifications and begun their rollouts, supported by our solutions. This translated into a 7.5% sequential strengthening of our quarterly sales pace in Q4 as compared to Q3. While the year culminated with these important rollouts getting underway, it also brought some timing challenges, both in our VBS and our content delivery segments. On the top line, the net effect was a generally flat year for consolidated revenues as we managed through the period of building upgrade readiness while still achieving a record year for Antra family sales. On the bottom line, we worked to push through some in-the-period margin headwinds. As we anticipated, our highly successful EN9000 rollout was an important contributor to the year's revenues, but temporarily changed the margin profile of our product mix in fiscal 25. EN 9000 pays many long-term dividends by housing successive generations of higher margin access modules in later periods. But when it's purchased on a standalone basis, it typically carries lower margins until paired with the software-driven access modules. We also faced an unusually steep decline in the value of the U.S. dollar, an almost six-cent drop. For BESMA, the cement raw materials purchased when the rate was higher were sold as finished goods when it was lower, with a related margin impact. While the U.S. to Canadian dollar exchange rate volatility was particularly pronounced between Q3 and Q4, likely driven by trade and tariff uncertainty at the time, the U.S. dollar has since stabilized in Q1, so we expect that the significant FX-driven impact was temporary. Additionally, while non-cash While non-cash, our quarterly and full-year bottom line reflects approximately 15 million of non-cash deferred development impairments and inventory charges we recorded in the fourth quarter. Bessema's extensive and multi-year R&D program has helped us build a remarkable portfolio of cable and fiber access solutions. And with ambitious product development programs like ours that are pursued in tandem with our customers' evolving technology roadmaps, It's not unusual that not every variant ends up being adopted at scale. As we approach year-end and commence our annual operating and strategic planning process, we made a disciplined assessment of our capitalized R&D balances and product inventories, resulting in these one-time non-cash charges. I want to add that in most cases, the charges relate to certain cable and fiber access solutions that have since evolved to very successful alternative solutions developed or acquired by Bessema. One example is Remote MAC-PHY, which came to us as part of the Nokia technology portfolio and has now migrated to Remote PHY and more recently to BCMTS as well. On the fiber access side, the chassis-based platform we also inherited from Nokia has migrated towards our shelf-based platform, EXS1610. which is both 10-gig E-PON and XGS-PON capable and delivers industry-leading feature sets. Remember that the Nokia acquisition, which cost us just $5.9 million Canadian, brought Bessema an entire suite of cable and fiber access platforms that has two-day driven revenue of approximately $400 million. Additionally, in the case of the variants I mentioned, we do expect to ultimately translate and monetize these inventories on a cash basis. That's already the case today, with continued uptake regularly occurring across multiple customers and programs for both of those platforms. As a result of the various factors, we ended fiscal 25 with adjusted EBITDA of $28.9 million, a solid result in light of the FX and other headwinds. And together with the non-cast charges and write-down, we reported a net loss of $0.73 per share, or an adjusted net loss of $0.18 per share with the one-time non-cast charges removed. Mind you, the $0.18 still includes $0.16 of non-cash share-based comp and non-cash foreign exchange losses for the year. Overall, we weathered the challenges while maintaining our strong position for growth going forward. In our video and broadband solution segment, we advanced on multiple fronts. One of the year's most important achievements was our entry into the virtual cable modem termination systems, or VCMTS, market. and the subsequent multi-year agreement with Cox Communications, which we signed in Q4. The significance of vCMTS lies in its ability to virtualize and definitively enhance the traditional hardware-based CMTS and CCAP infrastructure. It offers much greater flexibility, cost efficiency, reliability, scalability, and performance, together with a cloud-native architecture built entirely in software. The Lora Group forecasts that the annual VCMTS market will reach about $350 million U.S. by 2028. Our agreement with Cox now firmly positions Vesma as one of just three vendors worldwide operating a VCMTS solution of the quality and the sophistication that's demanded by Tier 1 broadband service providers. Cox selected our entry VCMTS software to upgrade its cable access network. migrating away from the limitations of legacy hardware CMTSs to the VCMTS paired with Remote PHY DAA nodes. Our progress in DOCSIS 4.0 Remote PHY development during the year builds on this and several other engagements across VCMTS and Remote PHY for Vesma. The design wins secured for both DAA nodes and VCMTS in fiscal 25 are now expected to be significant growth drivers for us in fiscal year 2026 and for years to follow. Another highlight of fiscal 25 was our tuck-in acquisition of Falcon V systems, which brought us two new software platforms. The first, Principal Core, is a virtual orchestration technology that aims to enable operators to converge cable, fiber, and even mobile networks into a single seamless access platform. The access test suite and simulators allow operators to validate and deploy DAA software upgrades at scale. dramatically speeding time to market for next-generation rollouts. Both solutions found quick traction with Tier 1 operators in fiscal 2025, with Charter licensing Principal Core as part of a multiyear contract and additional customers engaging with the Access test suite and platforms. Just to provide some early metrics on the financials, we acquired Falcon in October for $3.9 million Canadian net of cash received, and in the nine months it contributed to fiscal 25, we generated revenues of $5.7 million and pre-tax net income of $3.1 million. I've already touched on the success of our EN9000 platform, of which we've sold over 30,000 nodes during the year. In Q4, we announced the launch of our new EN3400. which provides a more compact and condensed version of the EN 9000 that's designed for multiple unit dwellings and enterprise markets, which have emerged as new and incremental use cases above the residential cable access segment covered by EN 9000. We expect the EN 3400 to be a meaningful contributor to our fiscal 26 results, and it's noteworthy that we design and are bringing this incremental platform to market in a few short quarters, in rapid response to a specific customer need and opportunity in an additional addressable market. And we expect similar performance from our new EnterPower holdover modules, which we began deploying in fiscal 25. This supercapacitor-enabled power backup for our cable and fiber access platforms is already generating strong demand. In our enteral optical family, fiscal 25 was a year of expanding what was already the industry's most complete and flexible offering of fiber access solutions, where we've been the market share leader in remote OLTs for multiple consecutive years. Additionally, we launched the VPON manager, our new cloud-based orchestration platform, and more recently the EEM210, a standalone 10 gig EPON module that fits both new and existing nodes and supports incremental fiber to the home expansion for operators. Next week, we'll be taking another major step forward with intra-fiber access as we demonstrate concurrent 50-gig PON and 10-gig EPON over the same optical port at the SCT Tech Expo happening next week. This is the world's first achievement, which will give broadband service providers the flexibility to add 50-gig PON when and as it's needed, while continuing to scale 10-gig PON and preserve those investments. Overall, fiscal 25 was an exceptional year of development for the VBS segment. And while we were further building out our leading ENTRA portfolio, our customer engagements continued to broaden and deepen. By year end, our engagements for ENTRA had climbed to 136, up from 115 at the start of the year. Importantly, and as I mentioned, by year end, some of the largest ENTRA customers had begun their broad-scale DAA rollouts. driving renewed momentum and a new all-time high record for entry-family annual sales in fiscal 25. Fourth quarter VBS sales increased 22% as compared to QT and are poised to keep building in fiscal 26. Now looking at other segments in the business, in our content delivery and storage segment, Fiscal 25 was a mixed year, with performance peaking in the third quarter, including an extraordinary 70% margin on increased software sales that quarter for CDS, before softening in the fourth quarter as a result of some project timing delays. We always note again that CDS is a lumpy by its nature segment, and it certainly reflected that through fiscal 2025. That said, it was also a year of achievements for CDS, including expansion of our dynamic ad insertion or DAI platform. We had deployments with multiple customers, enabling them to monetize video more effectively by providing advertising insertion capabilities and a path to even greater monetization opportunities for video going forward with a targeting of ads based on viewership characteristics. We also advanced our OpenCDM platform as we developed the platform further and the engagements further. Open caching allows operators to monetize the millions of over-the-top streaming video packets they're crossing their networks for free today, while at the same time greatly increasing the viewing quality and reducing caching costs for the streamers and content providers. We expect this technology to evolve into a material growth drive in the longer term for CDS. Additionally, we formed a partnership with Digital Harmonic for its Keyframe Media Optimization solution, which improves video quality while reducing bit rates and costs by leveraging generative AI. Turning to telematics, we continue to build on this segment's profitable recurring revenue contribution as we advance uptake for our successful movable asset tracking platform. One of the highlights of the year was signing a major national restoration company which added over 1,200 vehicles and 20,000 asset takes in a single contract to Telematics. By year end, the Telematics segment had over 120,000 assets under management, including over 20,000 vehicles and over 100,000 asset takes. Taken together, it was a significant year of strategic advances for VESMA that now position us very strongly for fiscal 2026 and for many years to follow. I'll return to talk more about this in a few moments, but first I'll pass the call to Judd to provide our Q4 financial review. Judd?

Thanks, Simit. Good morning to everyone who's on the call with us today. I'll be reviewing our fourth quarter financial performance in more detail. And for the purposes of this call, I'll assume that everyone has seen our Q4 and year-end fiscal 2025 news release, MD&A, and financial statements posted on Bessemer's website. Starting with consolidated sales, we generated fourth quarter revenue of $68.8 million. While that's up 7.5% on a sequential quarterly basis, it was 21% lower year over year. Our video and broadband solution segment accounted for 58.1 million of total sales with our next generation entry DAA products generating $54.6 million and commercial video contributing the $3.4 million balance. As Simit noted, we achieved strong quarter-over-quarter momentum with interest sales of 26% compared to Q3. On a year-over-year basis, however, VBS and interest sales were down 22% and 20% respectively compared to last year's record fourth quarter results. In our content delivery and storage segment, we experienced a significant quarterly revenue fluctuation with Q4 sales of $8.6 million decreasing 39% from Q3's strong performance and down 22% from a year ago. As we continue to reiterate, every customer's purchasing cycle for CDS products is different, which results in the lumpiness that we see in quarter-to-quarter CDS revenues. In our telematics segment, we increased fourth-quarter sales by 18% year-over-year to $2.1 million, This reflects the significant increase in the number of tags and assets now being monitored. Quarter over quarter, sales were 7% lower, which reflected a change in revenue recognition from an acceleration of certain asset tag sales that occurred in Q3. Turning back to consolidated results, gross profit for the quarter decreased to $18.8 million from $41.9 million last year. Lower sales and lower gross margin compared to the record fourth quarter last year were key factors, as was the $7 million non-cash write-down of the inventory to net realizable value. This write-down, along with our impairment charge in operating expenses, both derived from our reassessment of certain historical expenditures in the cable and fiber access solutions that were replaced, with alternative solutions developed or acquired by Bessemer. Our reported consolidated fourth quarter gross margin was 27.3% as compared to 47.9% in Q4 fiscal 24 and 47.7% in Q3 fiscal 25. This change was caused by the U.S. dollar to Canadian dollar FX volatility together with product and customer mix and the non-cash write-down of certain inventory to its net realizable values. Adjusted to exclude the one-time inventory write-down and other items, our fourth quarter adjusted gross margin was 37.4 percent. Turning to fourth quarter operating expenses, these increased $6 million year-over-year to $35.8 million. An impairment expense on deferred development assets of $6.9 million was the key factor in this increase, together with higher finished goods inventory allowances, additional operating costs related to the addition of the Falcon business, and higher deferred development amortization. Mitigating these increases were savings from our Q2 restructuring program. Excluding the impairment charges, underlying operating expenses decreased by $900,000 year over year. The notable changes include a $2.1 million decrease in G&A expense due to lower depreciation expense and decreased salary and bonus expense, a $300,000 increase in sales and marketing expenses reflecting increased finished goods inventory allowances, and a $1 million increase in R&D expenses to $12 million. This is primarily a result of higher amortization of deferred development costs, additional R&D costs from our Falcon V business, partially offset by savings from our restructuring program, as noted implemented in Key 2. As we've noted on past calls, however, reported R&D expense in a period is typically different than the actual expenditure as some of our R&D expenditures are deferred until product commercialization. Adjusting for this, our actual cash R&D investment was $15.7 million, or 23% of revenues in the fourth quarter, up from $15.6 million, or 18% of revenues in Q4 last year, reflecting our strong emphasis on investing in our innovation pipeline and future product developments. Looking at our bottom line results, the non-cash impacts that we've talked about resulted in a reported fourth quarter operating loss of $17 million compared to operating income of $12.2 million in the same period last year. As expected, foreign exchange losses incurred in the second quarter reversed in the second half as related to the impact of a stronger Canadian dollar on our outstanding U.S. denominated accounts receivable in debt. Finally, we reported a fourth quarter net loss of $13.2 million or a loss per share of 54 cents compared to net income of 8.3 million or 34 cents per share in the same period of fiscal 24. Additionally, our adjusted EPS loss for the fourth quarter is 5 cents per share after backing out the impacts of the non-cash E&O, inventory reserves, impairment, and other charges. This compared to an adjusted EPS of 29 cents per share in the same period of fiscal 24. Now, turning to the balance sheet, we ended the fourth quarter with $3.4 million in cash, up from $2.1 million in the same period last year. Working capital of $51.2 million decreased from $73.1 million in Q4 fiscal 24 and $60.3 million at the end of last quarter. This slight decline from last quarter was primarily due to lower inventory and accounts receivable. The components of working capital can be subject to significant swings from quarter to quarter. Our product shipments can be lumpy, reflecting the requirements of our major customers. Other timing issues like contracts with greater than 30-day payment terms also affect working capital, particularly if shipments are back and waited for a quarter. Lastly, cash flow provided by operations for the fourth quarter decreased to $18.9 million from $36.1 million during the same period last year. However, full-year operating cash flows increased significantly to $54.6 million in fiscal 25 compared to only 2.7 million in fiscal 24, primarily reflecting a near $70 million increase in cash flows from changes in net working capital. Our slow yet steady ability to generate cash over the last several quarters has brought our net debt position down from a high of 92 million in Q3 of fiscal 24 to 53.6 million at the end of fiscal 25. Our goals for fiscal 26 include continued pay down of our debt and further strengthening of our balance sheet. Now, on a final note, our board of directors approved a quarterly dividend of five and a half cents per share payable on November 3rd, 2025 to shareholders as of record as at October 10th. It's important to note that this dividend will be designated as an eligible dividend for Canadian income tax purposes. Now back to Subit.

Thank you, Judd. So as Judd reinforced, investment sequential quarterly revenue momentum began to build in Q4 as operators began their rollouts, and it's continued into Q1. As we approach the conclusion of the first quarter of fiscal 26, we're tracking to another strong quarter for the top line. We also anticipate a return to strong annual growth. while achieving new record quarterly run rates as we exit the year. We expect to pair the sales growth of the approved gross margin throughout the year, reflecting expected normalization of foreign exchange volatility and a more typical product mix. Moreover, as we add additional higher margin products to the mix through the year, we anticipate a further gradual strengthening of gross profit margins. We expect our VBS segment to lead the growth in fiscal 26 as our customers' network upgrades roll out, their existing inventories come into some better balance, and our new enter products and platforms provide added revenue. We also see a stronger year ahead for the content delivery and storage segment, supported by contributions from our new solutions, as well as continued IPTV expansions with new and existing customers. Although, again, as we always note, quarter-to-quarter performance in the CDS segment tends to be lumpy. And in our telematics segment, we're anticipating its typical, steady, and profitable performance from the recurring software subscriptions business on vehicles and assets will carry forward. Moving forward, we have momentum, and we're highly confident in investment in the future. We're entering this new fiscal year with the industry's broadest and deepest portfolio of innovative, interoperable cable and fiber access products. And we have multiple engines supporting our growth, as global adoption of DAA definitively ramps up and IPTV continues to expand. We look forward to translating this into our new momentum in our financial performance in fiscal 2026 and beyond. That concludes our formal comments for today, and we'd now be happy to take questions. Operator?

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session for analysts and institutional investors. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. We'll pause a moment as callers join the queue. Once again, analysts and institutional investors who would like to ask a question should press star, then one on their touchtone phones. As there appears to be no questions, this concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.